Living to 120 is becoming an imaginable prospect::undefined

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    5
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    You’re assuming humanity is going to survive the next 30-50 years. Unless we do some major course corrections right the fuck now (and that’s not looking likely at all because most of it has to do with the rich and powerful who will never change), climate change and/or our own hatred of each other is going to make us extinct or at least endangered and very unhealthy.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    312 years ago

    Let’s see if we make life expectancy consistently go up again before we start talking about 120. I could just as easily see it fall to 60 before going up to 120.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      52 years ago

      Aw c’mon! Just think, at ninety you could be hiking the Appalachian trail with a Camelbak tactical colostomy bag and a keen sense of wonder

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    82 years ago

    No thanks. There better be a global acceptance of physician assisted suicide simultaneously.

  • AphoticDev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    282 years ago

    I see the quality of life people have when they start approaching 100, and lemme tell you I wouldn’t want an extra 20 years of that. Living in the US sucks for healthcare, you’re gonna be miserable if you live that long.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      82 years ago

      And it sucks because usually when your that old you can’t do much besides sit. Sucks that are body’s don’t last long.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          142 years ago

          Or you could share this weird esoteric knowledge that other people don’t know about but you do.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            52 years ago

            So instead of being a prick like the person you’re actually replying to I’ll answer you. Blue zones are areas where the population regularly reaches over 100. The point they’re making is the people over 100 in those areas usually seem to be doing pretty well, moving, some even run, and die suddenly (things just happen to turn downhill very fast when you’re that old, nothing sinister implied)

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            2
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            Well If you’re posting here you have access to internet too.

            And that’s as far as I’m willing to help you without a ‘please’ and ‘ thank you’.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            112 years ago

            Obviously he’s talking about hockey, and means blue lines - it’s to help with calling off-sides

  • Obinice
    link
    fedilink
    English
    172 years ago

    Maybe in some ultra rich country, certainly not in the declining West though.

      • JJROKCZ
        cake
        link
        fedilink
        English
        32 years ago

        I’ve not been enjoying the last 30 all that much, I don’t think I want another 90 or nearly that far even

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      152 years ago

      My dad died a few days ago. In the last months he told me more than one “I could use three lives to do all that I’m interested in”.

      • JJROKCZ
        cake
        link
        fedilink
        English
        22 years ago

        I’m 30 now, having a hard time looking at the next 40-50 and thinking I want that. Definitely not 90

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          42 years ago

          Are you suicidal? Longer life does not mean living as a cripple, we can extend our health if we research more. And exercise and lower calorie diet seems to improve health a lot. A 70 year old who exercises and eats lightly will be healthier than a 30yr who eats like an American and drives without walking much.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      82 years ago

      Because a world in which people live to 80 tend to live well till 65, And a world in which people can live to 120 might open up the possibility of living well to 90.

      Stretching out life expectancies tends to stretch out the length of quality time too.

  • TwoGems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    62 years ago

    So you’re saying to dine on billionaires before that happens? 😏

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    262 years ago

    Living that long would break the economy. I’m retired on a fixed income, and my planning was based on living no longer than age 90. After that, my savings will be depleted, I will live on social security alone. When I imagine young people having another 30 years to pay for social security per person, it’s just broken. We would need to work until age 95 instead of 65. What would be the point?

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        52 years ago

        We spend as much as the top 10 countries combined on defense.

        Infrastructure - dangerously old Healthcare - non-existent Education- death spiral Social health - All measures worse every year

        Don’t know, we tried nothing and are out of ideas thanks to the vice grip of lobbies and bribes Eisehower himself warned about.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      22 years ago

      Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think working till very late age is a bad thing. I don’t expect to be sitting on my ass whole day long by the time I get to retirement age. What I do think is a bad thing is if by that time I am financially struggling to get by.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        22 years ago

        What happened to having hobbies? Working and languishing till death are not the only two possible options.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        5
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        The problem is we’re not fixing the economy at the other end. People work later because they’re healthier, and that could be good… but that means more people to do the same amount of work, increasing unemployment.

        Until we stop demonising non-work and that’s going to be hell for those stuck on it. Get some level of basic income so it’s a valid choice. Meanwhile in the UK our govermnent is appealing to the boomers by announcing increased punishment of the unemployed… We’re a long way from fixing the issues.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          12 years ago

          I don’t tend to think about the amount of work available nor the demand for the fruits of work to be fixed.

          I agree with the issues you are raising.

    • V H
      link
      fedilink
      English
      102 years ago

      We would not.

      The extra amount you need as life expectancy increases diminishes with each extra year. E.g. let’s assume (for each of calculation only; you can just scale it up linearly) that you need 10k/year on top of social security to live off in retirement. If your savings is 100k, and you only get a 5% return every year, you’ll run out after about 15 years. Hence a typical lifetime annuity bought at age 65 will be around that in the US because it matches up with current US life expectancy (it won’t deviate much elsewhere).

      So that’s for living to roughly 80. Here’s how it’ll play out as you approach 120:

      85: ~20% more 90: ~38% more 95: ~52% more 100: ~62% more 105: ~70% more 110: ~77% more 115: ~82% more 120: ~86% more

      As you can see, the curve flattens out. It flattens out because you’re getting closer and closer to have sufficient money that the returns can sustain you perpetually (at a 5% return, which is pretty conservative, at $200k, you can perpetually take out $10k, and no further increase in life expectancy will change that).

      Now, that of course is not in any way an insignificant increase, but if we assume 40 working years, $100k is about $850/year additional investment + compounding investment return at 5%. $186k is around $1550/year compounding.

      But here’s the thing, if you work 10 years longer, you grow it disproportionately much, because you delay starting to take money out, and you need less, while you get the compounding investment return of ten more years, and that drives down the yearly savings you need to make back down to around $850/year.

      So an increase of 40 years of life expectancy “just” requires 10 more years of work to fully fund it assuming the same payment in during the later years. But here’s the thing: Most people have far higher salaries towards the end of their careers, even inflation-adjusted, so most people would be able to fund 40 more years with far less than 10 extra years of work.

      (Note that if you already were on track for your pensions to last you to 90, if you were pre-retirement now, you’d “only” need about 35% extra savings to have enough until 120, because you’d get returns from a higher base, so the extra savings or extra years of work needed over what you managed would be even lower)

      These all work on averages btw. - due to differences in health, this is where we really want insurance/state pensions rather than relying on individual contributions.

      This doesn’t mean there aren’t problems to deal with. Especially if the life expectancy grows fast enough that it “outpaces” peoples ability to adjust. But it’s thankfully not quite as bad as having to add another 30 years of work.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        52 years ago

        Most of our financial advice for retirement has a hidden assumption that there is a large number of working age people helping not just social security, but also the stock market. A standard retirement portfolio will have a mix of t-bonds, stock market holdings, and a few other sectors.

        We’d be looking at a scenario where there are a lot of small investors (a few million dollars is small on this scale), but proportionately fewer workers making use of that investment.

        A US Millennial working today is going to need to be a 401k millionaire to retire with something comparable to their current standard of living. Most are going to fall short of that before we even talk about adding on extra life span.

        • V H
          link
          fedilink
          English
          32 years ago

          The numbers I gave are entirely independent of social security. They presume a far below average stock market return. You’re right they’ll need to be a 401k millionaire, and per the numbers I gave, to achieve that will take around ~9k/year in pension investments if they intend to retire at 65. A lot obviously can not afford that, especially not early in their career, and will need to compensate accordingly later in their career to the extent they want.

          But that wasn’t really my point. My point is that the number of extra years - irrespective of your current pension situation - you need to work in order to maintain the same financial outlook is far lower than the number of additional years of retirement you can cover. Whether or not you’re able to get to a sufficient pension level in the first place is a separate issue.

          To how the stock market will fare, the big challenge there is whether or not automation will keep up or not, and frankly I think the biggest social upheaval over the next century will not be that it can’t keep up, but that automation will outpace the proportional decline in the potential labour pool.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            22 years ago

            You might want to look at the Trinity Study of retirement portfolios. The general rate of withdrawal is lower than what you’re quoting here. Closer to 4% or lower. Though this is giving way in some quarters to a sliding system, where you live it large in good return years, and frugaly in bad years.

            But again, this all overlooks how that depends on a proportion of working people feeding stock market returns.

            • V H
              link
              fedilink
              English
              12 years ago

              The general rate of withdrawal need to be lower if you have a portfolio that is very conservative. That may make sense when you’re saving for you yourself and have a low risk tolerance, but it’s not needed. That people feel worried enough to do that, though, is a good argument for insurance/state run pension schemes, because they an inherently pay out more since they can smooth out the risks and pay toward the maximum averaged returns.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      42 years ago

      My grandma will be turning 103 in less than 3 months. She’ll be out of money by the end of the year. We got really lucky that the place she is staying has a secret fund which they will use to let her stay there. I guess moving someone at her age is really bad for them, and the people there like her, which played to her favor. I’m not sure what we would have done without that fund. It’s about $4k/month to stay there, and the price will only go up.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      32 years ago

      Things will need to change like a guaranteed basic income. We’ve been moving towards this eventuality for the last 5 decades or so.

    • sebinspace
      link
      fedilink
      English
      162 years ago

      Think we should moved towards post-scarcity first…

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    172 years ago

    Well I, for one, would like to live for as long as I want. I understand the sentiment here, though a little depressing, is against that concept. I understand people’s reticence toward extending a painful life, particularly if that comes with strings attached. Life extension would need to be paired with a basic income and the rich will need to foot the bill.

    I think we can all agree that George R R Martin should be put on this regimen immediately. We’re going to need 16 or more years for this dude to finish the series.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    132 years ago

    God damn it LET ME LIVE FOREVER LET ME LIVE FOREVER LET ME LIVE FOREVER I’m sick of lying in bed every night scared of the nothingness of death

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        102 years ago

        Not if I live in a geodesic dome sealed off from outside harms until the heat death of the universe, and hopefully by then we’ll have warmed up the universe so I can continue with immortality

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      32 years ago

      Man imagine how fucking boring it’d be after only a few hundred years.

      Everything ends, and if it didn’t the thing in question would lose all value.

      You sit awake scared of the nothingness of death, do you ever contemplate the nothingness before life? You are what the universe is doing in the here and now, like the crest of a wave in the ocean. The oceans waves, while the universe ‘peoples’.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        52 years ago

        I will never get this attitude. If you were born in the 1800s would you call today boring? There is just so much to experience and we always have new things being invented. If I had infinite time I would still never run out of things I want to do.

        That talk that “death is what makes life worth living” feels like a coping mechanism people invented to make peace with mortality. Everything that makes life worth living only happens while we are alive. The only thing that makes long lives so tragic is death itself.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          12 years ago

          Funny, what you wrote sounds to me like a coping mechanism in itself haha.

          Which is cool, like 90% of what we humans do is in some way a coping mechanism for our own mortality. We are all still going to die though, accept it or rage against it, it makes no difference in the end.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            12 years ago

            In what way? I don’t deny that I’m going to die, I don’t think this kind of life extension medical technology will become widely available quick enough and affordably enough to help me. But I also don’t romanticize the prospect. It’s one of those common mundane tragedies that happen every day.

            Frankly, sounds like you are trying to Uno Reverse Card me but I don’t even get what point you are trying to make. What, is just cherishing life a coping mechanism now?

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              12 years ago

              Can a common mundane thing not still possess some beauty? And even in having beauty or not, must we judge it to be good or bad?

              I’m not trying to do anything except talk shit on the internet. But yes, absolutely! It can be a coping mechanism, and there are definitely people who try to live to the fullest in the hopes that if they do it enough they’ll be able to forget their own impermanence.

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                English
                12 years ago

                I mean, I spent most of my life trying not to die so it seems pretty bad to me. I can’t exactly contemplate it like the falling leaf. I can see what you mean by how momentous it is but even if you can find beauty in it… it’s in someone else’s. You cannot really witness your own death to regard it as beautiful or horrible or anything.

                Yeah there are people who fill their lives with noise not to think about their own mortality but I don’t think that’s my case. We are talking about it right now. I don’t seek all my experiences as a checklist for death either. I won’t be the one keeping track. I won’t be the one remembering.

                Death is the cessation of self, and as much as I don’t fool myself into thinking I’d be immortal, I’d like to have as lengthy a self as I am afforded. Everything I cherish, I can only do so because I am. I can’t see death as bringing meaning to anything. More like the ultimate meaninglessness. How could people define themselves by something which, as far as we understand, they won’t even get to experience themselves?

                I suppose there is spiritual belief, but even then it’s ultimately unknown. However people believe they may exist past their deaths, it won’t be like this.

                But really, I feel really skeptical when people talk about the beauty and meaning of death because, if they truly believed that, wouldn’t they be more proactive about it? Though that’s pretty unhealthy to consider. Far from me to convince anyone they really truly see death as so wondrous.

                • @[email protected]
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  1
                  edit-2
                  2 years ago

                  These things that you cherish, would you still cherish them if you knew you could have them forever and never lose them? Or would they just become permanent things you get used to being there?

                  Happiness is only possible thanks to the sadness that contrasts it - without the suffering, is there really pleasure?

                  The way I look at it, life and death cannot be seperate things because one implies the other. Death has as much meaning and beauty as say, the fact that it rains - its something that happens, no more and no less.

                  Buddha teaches that the self, the ego, is merely an illusion - a very fun one, it’s true, but an illusion regardless. It’s the ego that attaches judgement to things, and this attachment is what leads to suffering. Someone who greatly cherishes life is therefore likely to fear death, and suffer because of it. The man who seeks only happiness is forever disappointed.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          12 years ago

          Also to respond to your example - yeah, I reckon seeing civilization repeating the same dumb patterns every hundred years would get boring fast. “Oh, facism is on the rise again, better grab the popcorn”.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            12 years ago

            In my country there are people who are still alive who lived during a military dictatorship and I cannot imagine of all things that they would be bored by its resurgence. The ones I hear speaking in the media seem livid if anything.

            I could see someone ending their immortal life out of desperation, but boredom? Only if they completely give up on themselves and the world. Even that sounds like a treatable form of depression.

            And that’s not even bringing up all the technology and arts that advance every day. In the most mundane sense I could think of several franchises I’m constantly waiting on the next entries, without mentioning all that I haven’t yet tried and ones that haven’t even been invented that I might like.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    8
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Meanwhile retirement funding is smaller and smaller. Imagine being retired longer than not

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      42 years ago

      Funding getting smaller, retirement age getting higher. Governments want to milk every working year out of its citizens. Longer, healthier life should benefit the people, not the governments.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        I think that is capitalism. Capitalism has been trying to shut down government as they would be the facility to have the power to tax the rich. Now if only it could be used appropriately what with all the legal system strangling everything all to reward the rich.